Some educators cheer state law's new focus on career education, but shift relies on districts

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Ron Baselice/Staff Photographer

Dubiski Career High School seniors Cecilia Serrano (left), Cristina Casarez, Bernardo Velez, Alina Zarate and Johnel Acosta went to Washington, D.C. recently to advocate for career and technical programs and education funding.

Career and technology educators are hailing a recently passed Texas education law that puts a priority on pathways to professions that don’t involve going to college.

Now school districts are tasked with developing the teacher skill sets and courses to make skilled certification far more attainable through public education.

Rigorous demands for core courses were forcing a track that, critics said, overlooked students who weren’t college-bound. They say some 40 percent of students were being missed — not just dropouts, but those graduating under the minimum plan with a bunch of credits they’d never use.

One priority of the lengthy House Bill 5, passed in the recent legislative session, was to give career readiness a track of its own.

“Unfortunately, a large amount of kids do not go to college,” said Jason Hudson, who will serve as Career and Technical Education Educators of North Texas president as member districts develop curriculum plans. “We can prepare those kids that were on that four-by-four plan to go to the next level with an education plan as well.”

The new law serves a clientele many local school districts had already recognized and made efforts to reach.

Denton, Grand Prairie, Irving and Mansfield districts have had technology facilities specific to high school needs for more than five years. A $4.2 million facility rolls out this month in Mesquite ISD, where 82 percent of students enroll in a career tech class.

Each Mesquite high school also has a career tech counselor. Hudson, the Mesquite ISD career and technology coordinator, said the transition from middle school is the place to start building on student interest.

By the end of ninth grade, students will sign a personal graduation plan that must promote either “college or workforce readiness” or “postsecondary education.” Parents must sign, too, because a 14-year-old who’s engaged and successful in a career tech class may not be mature enough to recognize that he or she might also be Harvard material.

An evolution

Before taking a lobbyist-consultant position in Austin as the Legislature convened, Curtis Culwell was a large-district superintendent speaking openly for change. Not only were trades being neglected, he said, technology had greatly enhanced the skill set needed to fill the jobs.

“Service providers have to have a higher degree of educational attainment than they’ve ever had before,” he said.

Career and technical educators scoff at the notion that their classes are easy. The field has evolved from vocational courses to specific offerings that require hands-on opportunity, technical training and heavy doses of math and science.

“Today’s first-grader, most of their employment or degree type isn’t even created yet,” Hudson said. “Typing 1 has changed. It’s now Business Information Management. We’re trying to get our freshmen in there to take this class. We want to work on their professional skills such as Excel and Power Point so they can start utilizing that and tie it back to their core subjects.”

Under the previous system, schedules focused on the core. And students whose daily highlight was a career or tech-path class would be taken out of that elective for remedial work if they fell behind in a core subject.

Now, that fourth math or science credit may be specifically tooled toward a career interest, for example, passing the difficult test for pharmacology certification.

Salary issue

Those deeper courses, however, will force districts to deepen their own skill sets. On its face, HB 5 lacks the incentives to lure skilled professionals to the classroom, forgoing better pay in the private sector.

Marketing, trade and industrial and health science technology instructors will be at a premium.

“There are some hurdles those teachers have to go through,” said Meshelley White, career and technical education director for Grand Prairie ISD. She cites certification outside of college, extra hours on their degree and field experience. “In some of those programs, there is a cost. Districts may be scrambling if they’re going to put those people together.”

Districts can now create career-oriented for-credit courses without state approval, so long as those are developed through college, business and community partnerships.

There was no additional funding approved to develop the courses, however.

In successful career tech models already on the ground, the partnerships are central to the success. Courses are molded through the partnerships. And the state’s approval tends to be a sign-off, rather than an obstacle.

“It seems there’s going to be a little more leeway so we will also be able to develop courses in collaboration with business and community leaders and partners that may look a little different than we are used to,” White said.

But she notes that her district has long been working with the Dallas County Community College District, the University of Texas at Arlington and technical schools in the area. The new requirement only fortifies career tech educators’ belief that they’ve always been on the right path.

“CTE is comprehensive of all the great things in education,” she said. “Not just because the classes are creative, but they’re areas of very intensive studies, very advanced and innovative in design. [HB 5] will allow a lot more flexibility when it comes to students being able to experience and realize these programs early on.”

Staff writer Jeffrey Weiss contributed to this report.

For four weeks, The Dallas Morning News is drilling down into how HB 5 will affect several aspects of secondary education in Texas, including:

Previous: Course selection and graduation plans.

Today: How the new system will focus on making students more career-ready.

Upcoming: How counselors will deal with major new responsibilities.

Upcoming: How smaller districts will follow mandates that didn’t come with any extra money.

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